Category: Articles

• April 5, 2013

  The day that keeps giving

  [Photo: Jasar – Granollers]   A man slices a dragon’s head off (saving a princess) and he then gives her a rose that is made from the dragon’s blood. The End?   No, just the beginning really. The human desire for legends of this sort is legendary but there is a lot more to every…
• October 23, 2012

  What British educators can learn from Spain (and other countries)

  This article was first published  here in the Guardian on-line’s education section.   If I could point to one idea that I would bring back to the UK from overseas it would be that that awful corporate-speak word ‘innovation’ – though I would call it creative teaching, rather than anything else. In Spain, it’s uplifting…
• September 15, 2012

  Outside

  The medieval bells sound The church light angles in Across our lowly bed But come what sorrow can This confounded appetite Will count its own worth And feed from troughs of minutes  
• May 3, 2011

  The science of successs in Barcelona

  [This short article was first published in the new Monocle Guide to Barcelona.] Reimund Fickert, project director at the Barcelona Biomedical Research Park (PRBB), points to a plethora of businesses and projects that make Barcelona a European hotspot for biotechnology. “Almost 50 new firms have set up here in the past decade and we now…
• September 8, 2010

  The belief business in Barcelona

  First published in Barcelona Metropolitan magazine 17/06/08 [PDF version: userfiles/file/Cults In Barcelona.pdf] [Photo: Barcelona Metropolitan archives]
• April 3, 2010

  The Finding of History

    [For Jessie Starkey]     As a child There was no such thing as history Nothing in our town had patina, texture, age Nothing showed evidence of time long ago The lines were straight The streets were new The houses breathed fresh air only And their bricks were made recently All this was obvious…
• March 27, 2010

  Globalization: “Freeters, combini and Uniqlo”

  [A version of this article was first published in Kansai Scene magazine and was co-written with Anil Ramsingh.] How is globalization happening? The people of Japan have a strong sense of belonging. Group identity comes before individual identity and the most basic unit of society exists in ie and mura, which literally mean ‘house and…
• March 27, 2010

  Barcelona teens addiction to mobile phones

  [First published in Catalonia Today on 20 November 2008] PDF version:userfiles/file/MobilePhoneAddictionInBarcelona.pdf   Barcelona psychologist, Vega González Bueso
• February 17, 2010

  Translation of “There is only one race: the human race.”

  (A manifesto by anti-racist scientists)   These were the words of scientist Rita Levi Montalcini (also attributed to Gandhi and Satyendranath). My English translation from the Spanish: I.  Human races do not exist. The existence of human races is an abstraction that has come about from a false interpretation of the small physical differences that…
• January 18, 2010

  Australian Sunday Magazine article with our (8 year old) son Hugo about life in Spain

  PDF version, click here